Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) unveiled the new MacBook Air in typical "One more thing" fashion at its "Back to the Mac" event held on Wednesday. Available in 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch formats--in which the smaller MacBook Air weights only a diminutive 2.3 pound--the new netbook-like machines are interesting in that they sport the older Core2 Duo instead of newer Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processors. Still, the presence of a Nvidia 320M chipset rounds up its prowess in the graphics department.

What Apple has done differently though, is to incorporate the use of flash memory directly into the motherboard, completely eliminating the presence of the standard hard disk drive. The company has instead replaced it with a very slim SSD (solid-state drive) in a non-standard form factor, which allows the system to boot up in no more than 15 seconds. More admirably, Apple says that the laptop can go into suspend mode for up to 30 days, and come back to life immediately courtesy of its instant-on capabilities. You can see a tear-down of the MacBook Air here if you are interested.

With the above facts in mind, do you consider the MacBook Air a game changer, or just rebadged old tech? I have some thoughts on this, which you can read in today's commentary.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News

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